…the next generation deserves to see nature’s beauty, too.
i
Life is full of synonyms: Animals / solemn things Non-living things / static things Humankind / wicked beings.
The only reason why humans take care of hens is to kill them on festive days or when hunger, like a thief in the dark, visits their stomach. Human nature is to love in order to earn.
Like the ground inhumed Jesus’ blood on his day of crucifixion, our lands are to do the same on Christmas days. So we bind animals live with solitude for the sake of Christ, whose name we do not bear.
Maybe the reason we celebrate Christmas is to have a subconscious consensus carnival for the spilling of pristine animals’ blood.
ii
2002: Butterflies were the instruments my friends and I used to measure beauty.
2020: We have not cut enough trees to save our bodies. Butterflies have become myths: We will tell our children of how beautiful they were. Butterflies and dinosaurs have become metaphors paleontologists use while describing prehistoric geologic times.
Antarctic ice is melting; nonchalance is settling like an appendix in humankind’s heart. Until we accept the earth is fading, our children’s future belongs to the void.
Prophecies: Nature will become a story we will tell our children to make them think the world can be beautiful (or the world was beautiful).
Idowu Odeyemi is a Nigerian poet and essayist. His poem Love Only Kills A Poor Boy won the Liverpool-based Merak Magazine 2019 Annual Literary Recognition Awards for Best Poem of the Year. He was shortlisted for the 2018 Nigerian Students Poetry Prize and the Christopher Okigbo Poetry prize. His poems appeared in the anthology 84 Bottles of Wine dedicated to the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Constellate Journal, Kalahari Review, and Praxis Magazine, among others.